Where we focus
Strategic advisory
General consulting for businesses serving, or seeking to serve, the Hawaii market.
Renewable energy facilities
Renewable energy lifecycle services (development, structured financing, EPC, asset management, and transactions).
Land stewardship
Land stewardship & key infrastructure management.
General business consulting
Hawaii’s market is unique and takes time to understand; experienced operators can create value as advisors.
- Broadly speaking, Hawaii’s business environment is relationship-based, highly structured, and resource-constrained. New initiatives evolve slowly and benefit from high-touch, in-person stewardship by established market participants. Permitting and regulatory compliance is onerous and can seem subjective. Concentrated asset ownership limits deal flow.
- Growth and innovation in Hawaii is further constrained by several structural factors, including: (a) A relatively small—and fixed—market size; (b) The inherent geographic and logistics challenges associated with operating in a remote archipelago (time, distance, cargo lift capacity, idiosyncratic island markets, islanded power grids, etc.); and (c) Capital resource limitations of all types—natural, human, and financial.
- Whether based in Hawaii or seeking to operate here, corporations, institutions, and entities must develop and execute specific strategies to address these unique market characteristics. HiRSG provides a variable cost, executive-level advisory resource with more than fifty years of complementary strategic and operational experience in the Hawaii market, and a proven track record of leading operating companies, managing projects, advancing development initiatives, and getting deals done.
Land stewardship, resource management, and critical infrastructure
Natural capital underpins Hawaii’s economy, and these resources are increasingly in demand. Knowledgeable advisors with proven infrastructure management and resource stewardship experience can help businesses successfully navigate Hawaii’s complex operating environment.
- Seemingly abundant, but actually scarce natural resources are the prime movers of Hawaii’s economy. Tropical sunshine, prevailing trade winds, stable freshwater supplies, and rich nearshore and deep-water ocean resources have long powered the economy in Hawaii, both historically and through its modern transition from plantation-based agriculture to a tourism-led marketplace. They have also fueled significant real estate and renewable energy development activity in recent years.
- Hawaii’s unique and undervalued natural resources remain in high demand by a variety of groups with competing interests, including the visitor industry, real estate developers, commercial enterprise, renewable energy producers, agricultural ventures, cultural practitioners, and resource conservation groups, among others.
- Businesses operating in Hawaii must navigate a unique set of asset ownership and resource stewardship obligations, many of which reach back to the Polynesian voyaging culture that first settled these islands, subsequently altered over time by Statehood and Hawaii’s plantation agricultural legacy.
- HIRSG offers insights and practical natural resource stewardship strategies for Hawaii’s nuanced marketplace. These are born from its principals long experience operating within the evolving regulatory and cultural frameworks that govern Hawaii’s natural capital.
Renewable energy assets
HIRSG understands the entire lifecycle for renewable energy facilities in Hawaii and can assist owners in evaluating the efficiency of their asset management strategy or comparatively analyzing potential options for both reinvestment & divestment.
- Many projects commissioned in the 2010s have progressed through their initial development and recapture periods and are facing lower future returns due to the front-loaded nature of renewable incentives and diminishing offtake agreement terms. Current owners may lack the knowledge, relationships, or capital to determine the optimal path forward. Certain assets may have simply become non-core and burdensome for their current owners.
- At the same time, technology has evolved, increasing production efficiency and lowering costs. Firm power and battery backup options have expanded. This combination presents an opportunity for HIRSG to create value for facility owners through proactive asset management, reinvestment & asset repositioning, and/or facilitating exits.